Site Relocation Project - NFA Case Study

The National Fostering Agency (NFA), founded in 1995, provides high-quality foster care that places the welfare of children at the centre of its work. Partnering closely with Local Authorities and UK foster carers to create the best possible opportunities and outcomes for child fostering.

The NFA has core business and partner agencies across the UK. They employ more than 500 people, including over 200 remote workers.

The Brief/Challenge

With over 20 years of experience in foster care, The National Fostering Group is the largest independent fostering agency in the UK, with the largest community of foster parents.
LP Networks have partnered with the NFG for over 6 years providing a variety of Managed and Project Services. We were asked to provide consultancy and resources to assist with their Head office move from working with their telecom’s provider through to onsite resources for the moving date.
The challenges were many with delays in the provision of Network links to the main corporate network, delays in network equipment delivery through to dealing with multiple 3rd parties around the wider Corporate network. The result of these challenges was a Head office move going live, but not linked to the core business network.

The Solution

So using an agile approach and through the provision of temporary 4G routers, we worked with the client to ensure the staff were able to access the cloud applications, hosted voice platform and internal data required – until the ISP can provide the core MPLS network to site.

In summary, we engineered or provided:

• Installation and setup of the 4G temporary network
• Setup of the Ubiquiti cloud-managed switches for Data & Voice provision
• Setup of the Ubiquiti Cloud Managed Wireless
• Liaison with Mitel phone supplier to install and test Teleworker remote phone solutions
• Assistance with setup of required servers in the client Data centre and redirection of users to access data from the new location
• Onsite work for the office move from network port patching, to user assistance with device setups on the desk.

Benefits

• The solution has allowed the NFG to make a smooth transition to their new office
• No downtime for the company
• A fully working network ready for their staff to use
• Using experience to engineer temporary solutions allowed the client to continue with the office move, despite the ISP delays in the MPLS delivery.
   

Tony Holt, Financial Director (NFA Group) said 'We asked Lee Pepper Networks to help us move away from a seriously under-performing outsourced network and hosted shared server arrangement, knowing that this would be a seriously challenging project. During the course of the project, we got to know Lee and his team well, and the experience was 100% positive.'

'In particular, LP Network's technical expertise is impressive and is deployed in a highly practical way. At the planning stage, alternatives were clearly outlined and evaluated, resulting in clear guidance to us as the client.

During the transition, the previous hosted service provider caused a number of problems. Lee and his team tackled these constructively, devising imaginative solutions and always with a very positive, "can do" attitude.'

He went on to say 'LP Networks delivered reliably everything that it set out to deliver. This involved extensive travelling to our 20 UK sites and considerable out of hours working. Throughout the project, the LPN team worked seamlessly with our in-house IT team, consistently demonstrating a high level of commitment to the successful completion of our project.

The transition project was completed successfully and on time, and we now have a reliable network infrastructure, with our own servers in a data centre, supported by LP Networks. Our network has much greater resilience than previously and user satisfaction has improved hugely with the speed of data access and reliability that LP Networks has brought to our system."

If you have an Office Move or IT Infrastructure Project and are looking for an experienced IT Services Partner, then please get in touch.